Drawing Human Anatomy

As I will be concepting and modelling human characters I will need to do extensive research into the Human Anatomy. This will be a very important part of research as I will have to look at muscle form and the structure of how the human body is perceived and indeed formed. This is also very important as the human eye and brain are very good and telling whether something is atomically correct as we look at human form everyday. To also help me learn about the human form I will attend life drawing classes as the best way to learn about the human form is by drawing it.

 Methods

When I began learning about the human form I started looking into different approaches of figure drawing, as this was key in the methods that are available to me as an artist. I have looked at two different ways; observational and formulaic, Observational drawing is the origins of sight-size and the methodology in which trains the human eye to view a particular subject with accuracy, by placing the object and the drawing side by side for comparative analysis. Observational drawing is a complex process that requires a high amount of reference material.

Formulaic figure drawing is another method of drawing that uses abstract rhythms or interlocking shapes to build upon. Once these formulas are memorised by drawing from life, you have a set of tools to go back to, allowing you to design from your imagination if you wish to. Observational drawing sharpens the eye and mind to capturing a likeness without using abstract concepts, formulaic drawing gives you a set of tools to develop both from life and most importantly, from your mind’s eye.

Venice's Economy

Venice's economy has changed throughout history. In the Middle-Ages and the Renaissance, Venice was a major centre for commerce and trade, as it controlled a vast sea-empire, and became an extremely wealthy European city, a leader in political and economic affairs and a centre for trade and commerce. Since the 11th century until the 15th century pilgrimages to the Holy Land were offered in Venice. Other ports such as Genoa, Pisa, Marseille, Ancona and Dubrovnik were hardly able to make any competition to the well organized transportation of pilgrims from Venice. This all changed by the 17th century, when Venice's trade empire was taken over by other countries such as Portugal, and its naval importance was reduced. In the 18th century, then, it became a major agricultural and industrial exporter. The 18th century's biggest industrial complex was the Venice Arsenal, and the Italian Army still uses it today, Venice's economy is mainly based on tourism, shipbuilding services, trade and industrial exports. Murano glass production in Murano and lace production in Burano are also highly important to the economy

A Traveller's History of Venice, Peter Mentzel

Venice: The Biography of a city, Christopher Hibbert

Geography

The city is divided into six areas or "sestiere". These are Cannaregio, San Polo, Dorsoduro, Santa Croce, San Marco and Castello Each sestiere was administered by a procurator and his staff.

These districts consist of parishes – initially seventy in 1033, but reduced under Napoleon and now numbering just thirty-eight. These parishes predate the sestieri, which were created in about 1170.

Other islands of the Venetian Lagoon do not form part of any of the sestieri, having historically enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy.

Each sestiere has its own house numbering system. Each house has a unique number in the district, from one to several thousand, generally numbered from one corner of the area to another, but not usually in a readily understandable manner.

Foundations of Venice

The buildings of Venice are constructed on closely spaced wooden piles. Most of these piles are still intact after centuries of submersion. The foundations rest on the piles, and buildings of brick or stone sit above these footings. The piles penetrate a softer layer of sand and mud until they reach a much harder layer of compressed clay.

Submerged by water, in oxygen-poor conditions, wood does not decay as rapidly as on the surface. It is petrified as a result of the constant flow of mineral-rich water around and through it, so that it becomes a stone-like structure.

Most of these piles were made from trunks of alder trees, a wood noted for its water resistance. The alder came from the western-most part of today's, in two regions of Croatia, Lika and Gorski kotar and south of Montenegro. Leonid Grigoriev has stated that Russian larch was imported to build some of Venice's foundations. Larch is also used in the production of Venice turpentine.

History

The city is often threatened by flood tides pushing in from the Adriatic between autumn and early spring. Six hundred years ago, Venetians protected themselves from land-based attacks by diverting all the major rivers flowing into the lagoon and thus preventing sediment from filling the area around the city. This created an ever-deeper lagoon environment.

In 1604, to defray the cost of flood relief Venice introduced what could be considered the first example of a 'stamp tax'. When the revenue fell short of expectations in 1608, Venice introduced paper with the superscription 'AQ' and imprinted instructions, which was to be used for 'letters to officials'. At first, this was to be a temporary tax, but it remained in effect until the fall of the Republic in 1797. Shortly after the introduction of the tax, Spain produced similar paper for general taxation purposes, and the practice spread to other countries.

During the 20th century, when many artesian wells were sunk into the periphery of the lagoon to draw water for local industry, Venice began to subside. It was realized that extraction of water from the aquifer was the cause. The sinking has slowed markedly since artesian wells were banned in the 1960s. However, the city is still threatened by more frequent low-level floods (called Acqua alta, "high water") that creep to a height of several centimeters over its quays, regularly following certain tides. In many old houses the former staircases used to unload goods are now flooded, rendering the former ground floor uninhabitable.

Some recent studies have suggested that the city is no longer sinking, but this is not yet certain; therefore, a state of alert has not been revoked. In May 2003 the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi inaugurated the MOSE project an experimental model for evaluating the performance of hollow floatable gates; the idea is to fix a series of 78 hollow pontoons to the sea bed across the three entrances to the lagoon. When tides are predicted to rise above 110 centimeters, the pontoons will be filled with air, causing them to float and block the incoming water from the Adriatic Sea. This engineering work is due to be completed by 2014.

Venice's Decline

Venice began a long decline in the 15th century, when it first made an unsuccessful attempt to hold Thessalonica against the Ottomans (1423–1430). It also sent ships to help defend Constantinople against the besieging Turks (1453). After Constantinople fell to Sultan Mehmet II he declared war on Venice. The war lasted thirty years and cost Venice much of its eastern Mediterranean possessions. Next, Christopher Columbus discovered the New World. Then Portugal found a sea route to India, destroying Venice's land route monopoly. France, England and Holland followed them. Venice's oared galleys were at a disadvantage when it came to traversing the great oceans, and therefore Venice was left behind in the race for colonies.

The Black Death devastated Venice in 1348 and once again between 1575 and 1577. In three years the plague killed some 50,000 people. In 1630, the plague killed a third of Venice's 150,000 citizens. Venice began to lose its position as a center of international trade during the later part of the Renaissance as Portugal became Europe's principal intermediary in the trade with the East, striking at the very foundation of Venice's great wealth, while France and Spain fought for hegemony over Italy in the Italian Wars, marginalizing its political influence. However, the Venetian empire was a major exporter of agricultural products and, until the mid-18th century, a significant manufacturing center.

An Expanding Venice

From around the 9th to the 12th century Venice developed into a city state. It's strategic position at the head of the Adriatic made Venetian naval and commercial power almost invulnerable. With the elimination of pirates along the Dalmatian coast, the city became a flourishing trade centre between Western Europe and the rest of the world. In the 12th Century the foundations of Venice's power were laid, the Venetian Arsenal. The Republic of Venice seized a number of places on the eastern shores of the Adriatic before 1200, mostly for commercial reasons due to the pirates based there were a menace to trade. 

Venice remained closely associated with Constantinople, being twice granted trading privileges in the Eastern Roman Empire, through the so-called Golden Bulls or 'chrysobulls' in return for aiding the Eastern Empire to resist Norman and Turkish incursions. In the first chrysobull Venice acknowledged its homage to the Empire but not in the second, reflecting the decline of Byzantium and the rise of Venice's power.

Venice became an imperial power following the Venetian-financed Fourth Crusade, which in 1204 seized and sacked Constantinople and established the Latin Empire. As a result of this conquest considerable Byzantine plunder was brought back to Venice. This plunder included the gilt bronze horses from the Hippodrome of Constantinople, which were originally placed above the entrance to St Mark's cathedral in Venice, although the originals have been replaced with replicas and the originals are now stored within the basilica. Following the fall of Constantinople the former Roman Empire was partitioned among the Latin crusaders and the Venetians. Venice subsequently carved out a sphere of influence in the Mediterranean known as the Duchy of the Archipelago, and seized Crete.

Though the people of Venice generally remained orthodox Roman Catholics, the state of Venice was notable for its freedom from religious fanaticism and it enacted not a single execution for religious heresy during the Counter-Reformation. This apparent lack of zeal contributed to Venice's frequent conflicts with the Papacy. In this context, the writings of the Anglican Divine, William Bedell, are particularly illuminating. Venice was threatened with the interdict on a number of occasions and twice suffered its imposition.

Venice

Venice is a city in northeast of Italy sited on a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by bridges. It is located in the marshy Venetian Lagoon which stretches all the way along the shoreline between the mouths of thee Po and Piave Rivers.Venice is also known to be the capital of the Veneto region. In 2009, there were estimated to be around 270,098 people residing in Venice commune, around 60,000 people in actual Venice.

The name Venice is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC. The city was historically the capital of the Venetian Republic. Venice has been know as many different names including; 'La Dominnate', 'Queen of the Adriatic', 'City of Water', City of Masks' and 'The Floating City'.

The Republic of Venice was once a major maritime power through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, being the centre stage of crusades and the battle of Lepanto, also it was a very important centre of commerce, mainly with silk, grain, spices and art, all the way through the 13th century up to the end of the 17th century. Therefore all this trading made the city extremely wealthy through most of it's history.  

Brief Origins

Venice was originally a Roman city and contained many refugees from near by Roman cites such as; Padua, Aquileia, Teviso, Altino, Concordia and from unprotected countryside villages, trying to escape waves of Germanic and Hun invasions. The most enduring immigration into the north of Italy was that of the Lombards in 568, leaving the Eastern Roman Empire a small strip of coast in the current Veneto. The Roman territory was organized as the Exarchate of Ravenna, administered from that ancient port and overseen by a viceroy appointed by the Emperor in Constantinople, but Ravenna and Venice were connected only by seaa routes and with the Venetian's isolated position came increasing autonomy. New ports were beginning to be built in the Venetian lagoon.

In 751 the Lombard King Aistulf conquered most of the Ravenna, leaving Venice a lonely autonomous Byzantine outpost. During this period, the seat of the local Byzantine governor was situated inn Malamocco. Settlement on the islands in he lagoon increased in correspondence with the Lombard conquest of other Byzantine territories as refugees sought asylum in the lagoon city.

In 775-1776, the Episcopal seat of Olivolo was created. During the reign of the duke Agnello Particiaco the ducal seat was moved Malamocco to the highly protected Rialto, which is now the current location of Venice.

Charlemagne wanted to subdue the city to his own rule. He ordered the Pope to expel the Venetians from the Pentapolis along the Adriatic coast and the Charlemagne's own son Pepin of Italy, King of the Lombards under the authority of his father, embarked on a siege of Venice itself. This however, proved to be a costly failure. The siege lasted 6 months with Pepin's army ravaged by the disease of the local swamps and eventually were forced to withdraw. A few months later Pepinn died from a result of disease contracted there. In the aftermath, an agreement between Charlemagne and Nicephorus in 814 recognized Venice as Byzantine territory and granted the city trading rights along the Adriatic coast.

Renaissance Fashion

I will now look at the clothing fashion used by the men in the Italian Renaissance, as this will help me imagine and concept how my hero, Aquaman, could possibly look during the 1400's. This will also help me when it comes to the modelling part of my project, it will allow me to understand how the flows and creases worked in the clothes and the style of texture that I could look at.

At the beginning of the 15th Century the men wore full and gathered or puffed sleeves, which gave considerable gracefulness to the upper part of the body, which was then discarded in the time of Louis XI. In the end  of the 15th century, the men's renaissance fashion imposed a short and ornamental mantle, which was a broad brimmed hat covered with feathers, and trunk hose, the ample dimensions of which earned for them the name of trousses.

In the 16th Century men's fashion changed and adopted clothes closely fitting to the body, with overcoats having tight sleeves, felt hats having with more or less wide birms, an closed shoes or boots. These Renaissance fashion garments, which differ altogether from those of antiquity, constitute the common type from which have since arisen the endless varieties of male dress.

Also in the 16th Century men wore coats that had a tight trunk fit but round the waist was puffed out, they wore a cloak only reaching down to their hips and was always much of an ornament. They carried a smooth or ribbed cap on one side of the head and a small upright collar adorned the coat, this collar was replaced after the 16th century.

Men in the Renaissance period wore four essential pieces of clothing. First, was the camicia or shirt. It was worn close to the skin as an undergarment. Tortora and Eubank (1989) stated that for upper-class men the camicia was made of silk or soft fine linens. The camicia was never worn alone, for that only symbolized a working man. Baines (1981) observed that lower-class men's camicias were made of heavy coarse linen. A gusset was inserted in the camicia to make it stronger and roomier. From 1440-1500 the camicia was very plain and never embroidered. Bucknell and Hill (1967) observed that throughout most of the 16th century the camicia had cuffs and had black on white Spanish-style embroidery.

 

Over the camicia was the doublet, which was a close fitted jacket worn with or without sleeves. A longer doublet was worn with a small skirt. Hale (1993) stated that doublets were worn only until the 16th century when the styles became fuller and less form fitting. The top of the doublet stood away from the neck to create a smoother more elegant look. Tortora and Eubank (1989) noted that doublets were very plain until about 1515, when contrasting fabrics were added.

The next piece of dress for the Renaissance man was the hose. Bucknell and Hill (1967) stated that the hose was attached to the doublet and seamed together at the crotch. Until the later part of the 15th century hose were worn by labour workers only. According to Hale (1965) the fabric was woven and worn tight to attain smoothness, yet hampering physical activity. Because of the controlled physical activity many painters show men with the laces of their hose untied and hanging in back.

The outer-most piece of clothing worn by common-men was the jacket. In the later part of the 15th century the jacket was worn over the shoulders and chest then falling in full pleats and belted at the waist. An alternative style was a huke-like jacket. Tortora and Eubank (1989) reported that early sleeves of jackets had puffs at the shoulders which tapered at wrists. In the middle part of the 16th century the sleeves of the jackets were worn severely tight and tended to cause loss of circulation. Sleeve attachments were worn purely for decoration. Tortora and Eubank (1989) reported that hanging sleeves were generally non-functional and attached to the jacket. An extra layer worn by lawyers and high political officials only, was a ceremonial robe. Hale (1965) stated that for outdoor weather a fur jacket was worn over the jacket and/or the ceremonial rob. Because of the stiff and tight clothing worn by the men of the early Renaissance period, movement was restrictive and mechanical. By the turn of the 16th century the movement became more natural with removal of padding from jackets. Lesley (1968) observed that yet another thirty years later movement was once again so restricted that it caused men to walk with their hands and arms out in front of the body with their feet turned out. The end of the Renaissance, though, brought a natural movement back again.

 

Footwear was a big part of the men's fashion. Bucknell and Hill (1967) reported that in the beginning of the Renaissance Period the shoes were long, pointed, and generally worn for indoor use only. Leather clogs with wooden soles were worn for outdoor weather. Aston (1968) stated that in 1485 shoes became less pointed and more rounded. Most were calf length, form-fitting, and laced up the sides. At the turn of the century men's shoes became broader or duck billed with ribbons tied across the top of the foot. Baines (1981) stated that toward the end of the period the footwear became more natural and slipper-like (p.176). Shoe-makers used slashing and pricking to give the shoe a better fit. Tortora and Eubank (1989) reported that at the end of the Renaissance Period the most popular mode of footwear was the footed hose.

Hats, hair styles, and accessories were the last essential pieces that finished off the man's costume. At the beginning of the Renaissance Period younger men wore their hair long from ears to shoulders, while older men wore their hair shorter and sometimes shaved. Aston (1968) stated that along with the hair styles, the early Renaissance brought turban-like hats that were worn with a white coif beneath. As well as hair styles and hats, accessories were a big part of the early Renaissance Period. Eubank and Tortora (1989) reported that men of the early Renaissance wore narrow belts, carried small purses and daggers. They wore finger rings on the joints of their first and second fingers only.

In the middle Renaissance, men started to wear cleanly shaved beards and moustaches, something never seen in the Renaissance before. Turban-like hats were replaced with beret-like crowns with upturned brims. The berets were made with thick cloth, felt, beaver, or velvet. As an accessory, the men in the middle Renaissance carried walking sticks with their berets resting on top. Hair styles of the late Renaissance Period were very short, even for young men. Hair below the chin was rarely or never seen. The hats of the late Renaissance Period were very elaborate. it was reported that black caps were worn with ostrich feathers, brooches, and jewels. As an accessory men of the late Renaissance Period wore huge jewelled rings over gauntlet gloves.

Lesley, P. (1968). Renaissance jewels and jewelled objects. Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art.

http://www.richeast.org/htwm/renf/ren.html 

http://www.renaissance-spell.com/Renaissance-Fashion.html

http://aneafiles.webs.com/renaissancegallery/extantmen.html

Scarecrow Character Idea

As I am placing Scarecrow during the plague I think that it will be a clever idea to have him designed to look very similar to a Plague Doctor. That way he can easily apply his theories on patients/test subjects. It could also be where he got his inspiration from as in the comics he wears a mask that filters out his own gas.

I will now look into the background history of a plague doctor and the outfit that protected them during a plague.    

Plague doctor

A plague doctor (Italian: medico della peste,) was a special medical physician who saw those who had the plague. They were specifically hired by towns that had many plague victims in times of plague epidemics. Since the city was paying their salary they treated everyone, the rich and the poor. They were not normally professionally trained experienced physicians or surgeons, and often were second-rate doctors not able to otherwise run a successful medical business or young physicians trying to establish themselves.

Plague doctors by their covenant treated plague patients and were known as municipal or "community plague doctors", whereas "general practitioners" were separate doctors and both might be in the same European city or town at the same time. In France and the Netherlands plague doctors often lacked medical training and were referred to as "empirics". In one case a plague doctor had been a fruit-seller before his employment as a physician.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some doctors wore a beak-like mask which was filled with aromatic items. The masks were designed to protect them from putrid air, which (according to the miasmatic theory of disease) was seen as the cause of infection. Being a plague doctor was unpleasant, dangerous and difficult. Their chances of survival in times of a plague epidemic were slim

Persecutions

Renewed religious fervor and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death. Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims", lepers and Roma, thinking that they were to blame for the crisis. Lepers, and other individuals with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were singled out and exterminated throughout Europe.

Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes, and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for the plague's emergence. The governments of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis because no one knew its cause or how it spread. The mechanism of infection and transmission of diseases was little understood in the 14th century; many people believed only God's anger could produce such horrific displays.

There were many attacks against Jewish communities. In August 1349, the Jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were exterminated. In February of that same year, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 Jews. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities were destroyed. The Brotherhood of the Flagellants, a movement said to number up to 800,000, reached its peak of popularity.

In culture

The Black Death had a profound impact on art and literature throughout the generation that experienced it. Much of the most useful manifestations of the Black Death in literature, to historians, comes from the accounts of its chroniclers. Some of these chroniclers were famous writers, philosophers and rulers such as Boccaccio and Petrarch. Their writings, however, did not reach the majority of the European population. Petrarch's work was read mainly by wealthy nobles and merchants of Italian city-states. He wrote hundreds of letters and vernacular poetry, and passed on to later generations a revised interpretation of courtly love. There was one troubadour, writing in the lyric style long out of fashion, who was active in 1348. Peire Lunel de Montech composed the sorrowful sirventes "Meravilhar no·s devo pas las gens" during the height of the plague in Toulouse.

They died by the hundreds, both day and night, and all were thrown in ... ditches and covered with earth. And as soon as those ditches were filled, more were dug. And I, Agnolo di Tura ... buried my five children with my own hands ... And so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.

—The Plague in Siena: An Italian Chronicle

How many valiant men, how many fair ladies, breakfast with their kinfolk and the same night supped with their ancestors in the next world! The condition of the people was pitiable to behold. They sickened by the thousands daily, and died unattended and without help. Many died in the open street, others dying in their houses, made it known by the stench of their rotting bodies. Consecrated churchyards did not suffice for the burial of the vast multitude of bodies, which were heaped by the hundreds in vast trenches, like goods in a ships hold and covered with a little earth.

—Giovanni Boccaccio

Consequences

Figures for the death toll vary widely by area and from source to source as new research and discoveries come to light. It killed an estimated 75 million to 200 million people in the 14th century. According to medieval historian Philip Daileader in 2007:

The trend of recent research is pointing to a figure more like 45 percent to 50 percent of the European population dying during a four-year period. There is a fair amount of geographic variation. In Mediterranean Europe, areas such as Italy, the south of France and Spain, where plague ran for about four years consecutively, it was probably closer to 75 percent to 80 percent of the population. In Germany and England ... it was probably closer to 20 percent.

The most widely accepted estimate for the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran and Syria, during this time, is for a death rate of about a third. The Black Death killed about 40% of Egypt's population. Half of Paris's population of 100,000 people died. In Italy, Florence's population was reduced from 110,000 or 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351. At least 60 percent of Hamburg's and Bremen's population perished. Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450. In 1348, the plague spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins, about a third of the European population had already perished. In crowded cities, it was not uncommon for as much as 50 percent of the population to die. Europeans living in isolated areas suffered less, whereas monks and priests were especially hard hit since they cared for the Black Death's victims.

Alternative explanations

This interpretation was first significantly challenged by the work of British bacteriologist J. F. D. Shrewsbury in 1970, who noted that the reported rates of mortality in rural areas during the 14th century pandemic were inconsistent with the modern bubonic plague, leading him to conclude that contemporary accounts were exaggerations. In 1984, zoologist Graham Twigg produced the first major work to challenge the bubonic plague theory directly, and his doubts about the identity of the Black Death have been taken up by a number of authors, including Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. (2002), David Herlihy (1997), and Susan Scott and Christopher Duncan (2001).

It is recognized that an epidemiological account of the plague is as important as an identification of symptoms, but researchers are hampered by the lack of reliable statistics from this period. Most work has been done on the spread of the plague in England, and even estimates of overall population at the start vary by over 100% as no census was undertaken between the Domesday Book and 1377. Estimates of plague victims are usually extrapolated from figures from the clergy.

In addition to arguing that the rat population was insufficient to account for a bubonic plague pandemic, sceptics of the bubonic plague theory point out that the symptoms of the Black Death are not unique (and arguably in some accounts may differ from bubonic plague); that transference via fleas in goods was likely to be of marginal significance and that the DNA results may be flawed and might not have been repeated elsewhere, despite extensive samples from other mass graves. Other arguments include the lack of accounts of the death of rats before outbreaks of plague between the 14th and 17th centuries; temperatures that are too cold in northern Europe for the survival of fleas; that, despite primitive transport systems, the spread of the Black Death was much faster than that of modern bubonic plague; that mortality rates of the Black Death appear to be very high; that, while modern bubonic plague is largely endemic as a rural disease, the Black Death indiscriminately struck urban and rural areas; and that the pattern of the Black Death, with major outbreaks in the same areas separated by five to fifteen years, differs from modern bubonic plague, which often becomes endemic for decades, flaring up on an annual basis.

Walløe complains that all of these authors "take it for granted that Simond's infection model, black rat → rat flea → human, which was developed to explain the spread of plague in India, is the only way an epidemic of Yersinia pestis infection could spread", whilst pointing to several other possibilities.

A variety of alternatives to the Y. pestis have been put forward. Twigg suggested that the cause was a form of anthrax and N. F. Cantor (2001) thought it may have been a combination of anthrax and other pandemics. Scott and Duncan have argued that the pandemic was a form of infectious disease that characterise as hemorrhagic plague similar to Ebola. Archaeologist Barney Sloane has argued that there are insufficient evidence of the extinction of large number of rats in the archaeological record of the medieval waterfront in London and that the plague spread too quickly to support the thesis that the Y. pestis was spread from fleas on rats and argues that transmission must have been person to person. However, no single alternative solution has achieved widespread acceptance Many scholars arguing for the Y. pestis as the major agent of the pandemic suggest that its extent and symptoms can be explained by a combination of bubonic plague with other diseases, including typhus, smallpox and respiratory infections. In addition to the bubonic infection, others point to additional septicemia (a type of "blood poisoning") and pneumonic (an airborne plague that attacks the lungs before the rest of the body) forms of the plague, which lengthen the duration of outbreaks throughout the seasons and help account for its high mortality rate and additional recorded symptoms.

Symptoms

Contemporary accounts of the plague are often varied or imprecise. The most commonly noted symptom was the appearance of buboes (or gavocciolos) in the groin, the neck and armpits, which oozed pus and bled when opened. Boccaccio's description is graphic:

"In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg...From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous. As the gavocciolo had been and still was an infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they showed themselves."

Ziegler comments that the only medical detail that is questionable is the infallibility of approaching death, as if the bubo discharges, recovery is possible.

This was followed by acute fever and vomiting of blood. Most victims died two to seven days after initial infection. David Herlihy identifies another potential sign of the plague: freckle-like spots and rashes which could be the result of flea-bites.

Some accounts, like that of Louis Heyligen, a musician in Avignon who died of the plague in 1348, noted a distinct form of the disease which infected the lungs and led to respiratory problems and which is identified with pneumonic plague.

"It is said that the plague takes three forms. In the first people suffer an infection of the lungs, which leads to breathing difficulties. Whoever has this corruption or contamination to any extent cannot escape but will die within two days. Another form...in which boils erupt under the armpits,...a third form in which people of both sexes are attacked in the groin

Causes

Medical knowledge had stagnated during the Middle Ages. The most authoritative account at the time came from the medical faculty in Paris in a report to the king of France that blamed the heavens, in the form of a conjunction of three planets in 1345 that caused a "great pestilence in the air". This report became the first and most widely circulated of a series of "plague tracts" that sought to give advice to sufferers. That the plague was caused by bad air became the most widely accepted theory. The word plague had no special significance at this time, and only the recurrence of outbreaks during the Middle Ages gave it the name that has become the medical term.

The importance of hygiene was recognized only in the nineteenth century; until then it was common that the streets were filthy, with live animals of all sorts around and human parasites abounding. A transmissible disease will spread easily in such conditions. One development as a result of the Black Death was the establishment of the idea of quarantine in Dubrovnik in 1377 after continuing outbreaks.

The dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to Yersinia pestis, also responsible for an epidemic that began in southern China in 1865, eventually spreading to India. The investigation of the pathogen that caused the 19th-century plague was begun by teams of scientists who visited Hong Kong in 1894, among whom was the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin, after whom the pathogen was named Yersinia pestis. The mechanism by which Y. pestis was usually transmitted was established in 1898 by Paul-Louis Simond and was found to involve the bites of fleas whose midguts had become obstructed by replicating Y. pestis several days after feeding on an infected host. This blockage results in starvation and aggressive feeding behavior by the fleas, which repeatedly attempt to clear their blockage by regurgitation, resulting in thousands of plague bacteria being flushed into the feeding site, infecting the host. The bubonic plague mechanism was also dependent on two populations of rodents: one resistant to the disease, which act as hosts, keeping the disease endemic; and a second that lack resistance. When the second population dies, the fleas move on to other hosts, including people, thus creating a human epidemic.

The historian Francis Aidan Gasquet, who had written about the 'Great Pestilence' in 1893 and suggested that "it would appear to be some form of the ordinary Eastern or bubonic plague" was able to adopt the epidemiology of the bubonic plague for the Black Death for the second edition in 1908, implicating rats and fleas in the process, and his interpretation was widely accepted for other ancient and medieval epidemics, such as the Justinian plague that was prevalent in the Eastern Roman Empire from 541 to 700 AD.

More recently other forms of plague have been implicated. The modern bubonic plague has a mortality rate of 30 to 75 percent and symptoms including fever of 38–41 °C (101–105 °F), headaches, painful, aching joints, nausea and vomiting, and a general feeling of malaise. If untreated, of those that contract the bubonic plague, 80 percent die within eight days. Pneumonic plague has mortality rate of 90 to 95 percent. Symptoms include fever, cough, and blood-tinged sputum. As the disease progresses, sputum becomes free flowing and bright red. Septicemic plague is the least common of the three forms, with a mortality rate close to 100 percent. Symptoms are high fevers and purple skin patches (purpura due to disseminated intravascular coagulation). In cases of pneumonic and particularly septicemic plague the progress of the disease is so rapid that there would often be no time for the development of the enlarged lymph nodes that were noted as buboes.

"Many modern scholars accept that the lethality of the Black Death stemmed from the combination of bubonic and pneumonic plague with other diseases and warn that every historical mention of 'pest' was not necessarily bubonic plague...In her study of 15th-century outbreaks, Ann Carmichael states that worms, the pox, fevers and dysentery clearly accompanied bubonic plague

Populations in crisis

In Europe, the Medieval Warm Period ended some time towards the end of the 13th century, bringing the "Little Ice Age" and harsher winters with reduced harvests. In northern Europe, new technological innovations such as the heavy plough and the three-field system were not as effective in clearing new fields for harvest as they had been in the Mediterranean because the north had poor clay soil, and the potato, otherwise ideal for Northern Europe, was an American crop unknown in Europe at the time. Food shortages and rapidly inflating prices were a fact of life for as much as a century before the plague. Wheat, oats, hay and consequently livestock were all in short supply. Their scarcity resulted in malnutrition, which increases susceptibility to infections due to weakened immunity. Consistently high fertility rates, at five or more children per woman throughout Europe, resulted in high population growth rates and contributed to food shortages. In the autumn of 1314, heavy rains began to fall, followed by several years of cold and wet winters. The already weak harvests of the north suffered and the seven-year famine ensued. In the years 1315 to 1317, a catastrophic famine, known as the Great Famine, struck much of northwest Europe. It was arguably the worst in European history, reducing the population by perhaps more than 10 percent.

                                

Infection and migration

The plague disease, generally thought to be caused by Yersinia pestis, is enzootic (commonly present) in populations of fleas carried by ground rodents, including marmots, in various areas including Central Asia, Kurdistan, Western Asia, Northern India and Uganda. Nestorian graves dating to 1338–9 near Lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgizstan have inscriptions referring to plague and are thought by many epidemiologists to mark the outbreak of the epidemic, from which it could easily have spread to China and India. In October 2010, medical geneticists confirmed that the plague originated in Yunnan, province in southwest China. In China, the 13th century Mongol conquest caused a decline in farming and trading. However, economic recovery had been observed in the beginning of the 14th century. In the 1330s a high frequency of natural disasters and plagues led to widespread famine starting in 1331, with a deadly plague arriving soon after. The 14th-century plague killed an estimated 25 million Chinese and other Asians during the 15 years before it entered Constantinople in 1347. However, according to George Sussman, the first obvious medical description of plague in China dates to 1644.

The disease may have travelled along the Silk Road with Mongol armies and traders or it could have come via ship. By the end of 1346, reports of plague had reached the seaports of Europe: "India was depopulated, Tartary, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia were covered with dead bodies".

Plague was reportedly first introduced to Europe at the trading city of Caffa in the Crimea in 1347. After a protracted siege, during which the Mongol army under Jani Beg was suffering the disease, they catapulted the infected corpses over the city walls to infect the inhabitants. The Genoese traders fled, taking the plague by ship into Sicily and the south of Europe, whence it spread north. Whether or not this hypothesis is accurate, it is clear that several existing conditions such as war, famine, and weather contributed to the severity of the Black Death.

European outbreak

There appear to have been several introductions into Europe. It reached Sicily in October 1347 carried by twelve Genoese galleys, where it rapidly spread all over the island. Galleys from Caffa reached Genoa and Venice in January 1348 but it was the outbreak in Pisa a few weeks later that was the entry point to northern Italy. Towards the end of January one of the galleys expelled from Italy arrived in Marseille.

From Italy the disease spread northwest across Europe, striking France, Spain, Portugal and England by June 1348, then turned and spread east through Germany and Scandinavia from 1348 to 1350. It was introduced in Norway in 1349 when a ship landed at Askøy, then spread to Bjørgvin (modern Bergen) but never reached Iceland. Finally it spread to northwestern Russia in 1351. The plague spared some parts of Europe, including the Kingdom of Poland and isolated parts of Belgium and the Netherlands.

Middle Eastern outbreak

The plague struck various countries in the Middle East during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures. As it spread to western Europe, the disease entered the region from southern Russia also. By autumn 1347, the plague reached Alexandria in Egypt, probably through the port's trade with Constantinople, and ports on the Black Sea. During 1347, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza, and north along the eastern coast to cities in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, including Ashkelon, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon, Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. In 1348–49, the disease reached Antioch. The city's residents fled to the north, most of them dying during the journey, but the infection had been spread to the people of Asia Minor.

Mecca became infected in 1349. During the same year, records show the city of Mawsil (Mosul) suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease. In 1351, Yemen experienced an outbreak of the plague. This coincided with the return of King Mujahid of Yemen from imprisonment in Cairo. His party may have brought the disease with them from Egypt.

Naming

Medieval people called the catastrophe of the 14th century either the "Great Pestilence"' or the "Great Plague". Writers contemporary to the plague referred to the event as the "Great Mortality". Swedish and Danish chronicles of the 16th century described the events as "black" for the first time, not to describe the late-stage sign of the disease, in which the sufferer's skin would blacken due to subepidermal hemorrhages and the extremities would darken with a form of gangrene, acral necrosis, but more likely to refer to black in the sense of glum or dreadful and to denote the terror and gloom of the events. The German physician and medical writer Justus Hecker suggested that a mistranslation of the Latin atra mors (terrible, or black, death) had occurred in Scandinavia when he described the catastrophe in 1832 in his publication "Der schwarze Tod im vierzehnten Jahrhundert". The work was translated into English the following year, and with the cholera epidemic happening at that time, "The Black Death in the 14th century" gained widespread attention and the terms Schwarzer Tod and Black Death became more widely used in the German- and English-speaking worlds, respectively.

More In depth on the plague

The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Although there were several competing theories as to the etiology of the Black Death, recent analysis of DNA from victims in northern and southern Europe indicates that the pathogen responsible was the Yersinia pestis bacterium, which causes the Bubonic plague, although these were different, previously unknown ancestral variants of those identified in the 20th century.

The Black Death is thought to have started in China or central Asia, before spreading west. It is estimated to have killed 25 million people or 30% of the population of China. The plague then traveled along the Silk Road and reached the Crimea by 1346. From there, it was probably carried by Oriental rat fleas living on the black rats that were regular passengers on merchant ships. Spreading throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, the Black Death is estimated to have killed 30–60 percent of Europe's population. All in all, the plague reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in the 14th century.

The aftermath of the plague created a series of religious, social and economic upheavals which had profound effects on the course of European history. It took 150 years for Europe's population to recover. The plague reoccurred occasionally in Europe until the 19th century.

Major outbreaks

There have been three major outbreaks of plague. The Plague of Justinian in the 6th and 7th centuries is the first known attack on record, and marks the first firmly recorded pattern of bubonic plague. From historical descriptions, as much as 40 percent of the population of Constantinople died from the plague. Modern estimates suggest half of Europe's population was wiped out before the plague disappeared in the 700s. After 750, major epidemic diseases did not appear again in Europe until the Black Death of the 14th century. The Third Pandemic hit China in the 1890s and devastated India, but was confined to limited outbreaks in the west.

The Black Death originated in or near China and spread by way of the Silk Road or by ship. It may have reduced world population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400.

The plague is thought to have returned at intervals with varying virulence and mortality until the 18th century. On its return in 1603, for example, the plague killed 38,000 Londoners. Other notable 17th-century outbreaks were the Italian Plague (1629–1631); the Great Plague of Seville (1647–1652); the Great Plague of London (1665–1666); and the Great Plague of Vienna (1679). There is some controversy over the identity of the disease, but in its virulent form, after the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720–1722, the Great Plague of 1738 (which hit Eastern Europe), and the Russian plague of 1770-1772, it seems to have gradually disappeared from Europe. By the early 19th century, the threat of plague had diminished, but it was quickly replaced by a new disease. The Asiatic cholera was the first of several cholera pandemics to sweep through Asia and Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The 14th-century eruption of the Black Death had a drastic effect on Europe's population, irrevocably changing the social structure. It was, arguably, a serious blow to the Catholic Church and resulted in widespread persecution of minorities such as Jews, foreigners, beggars, and lepers. The uncertainty of daily survival has been seen as creating a general mood of morbidity, influencing people to "live for the moment", as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353).

Black Death/Plague

The devastation caused by the Black Death in Florence, which hit Europe between 1348 and 1350, resulted in a shift in the world view of people in 14th-century Italy. Italy was particularly badly hit by the plague, and it has been speculated that the resulting familiarity with death caused thinkers to dwell more on their lives on Earth, rather than on spirituality and the afterlife. It has also been argued that the Black Death prompted a new wave of piety, manifested in the sponsorship of religious works of art. However, this does not fully explain why the Renaissance occurred specifically in Italy in the 14th century. The Black Death was a pandemic that affected all of Europe in the ways described, not only Italy. The Renaissance's emergence in Italy was most likely the result of the complex interaction of the above factors.

The plague was carried by fleas on sailing vessels returning from the ports of Asia, spreading quickly due to lack of proper sanitation: the population of England, then about 4.2 million, lost 1.4 million people to the bubonic plague. Florence's population was nearly halved in the year 1347. As a result of the decimation in the populace the value of the working class increased, and commoners came to enjoy more freedom. To answer the increased need for labor, workers traveled in search of the most favorable position economically.

The demographic decline due to the plague had some economic consequences: the prices of food dropped and land values declined by 30 to 40% in most parts of Europe between 1350 and 1400. Landholders faced a great loss but for ordinary men and women, it was a windfall. The survivors of the plague found not only that the prices of food were cheaper but also found that lands were more abundant, and that most of them inherited property from their dead relatives.

The spread of disease was significantly more rampant in areas of poverty. Epidemics ravaged cities, particularly children. Plagues were easily spread by lice, unsanitary drinking water, armies, or by poor sanitation. Children were hit the hardest because many diseases such as typhus and syphilis target the immune system and left young children without a fighting chance. Children in city dwellings were more affected by the spread of disease than the children of the wealthy.

The Black Death caused greater upheaval to Florence's social and political structure than later epidemics. Despite a significant number of deaths among members of the ruling classes, the government of Florence continued to function during this period. Formal meetings of elected representatives were suspended during the height of the epidemic due to the chaotic conditions in the city, but a small group of officials was appointed to conduct the affairs of the city, which ensured continuity of government.

Religion

The new ideals of humanism, although more secular in some aspects, developed against a Christian backdrop, especially in the Northern Renaissance. Much, if not most, of the new art was commissioned by or in dedication to the Church. However, the Renaissance had a profound effect on contemporary theology, particularly in the way people perceived the relationship between man and God. Many of the period's foremost theologians were followers of the humanist method, including Erasmus, Zwingli, Thomas More, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.

The Renaissance began in times of religious turmoil. The late Middle Ages saw a period of political intrigue surrounding the Papacy, culminating in the Western Schism, in which three men simultaneously claimed to be true Bishop of Rome. While the schism was resolved by the Council of Constance (1414), the 15th century saw a resulting reform movement known as Conciliarism, which sought to limit the pope's power. Although the papacy eventually emerged supreme in ecclesiastical matters by the Fifth Council of the Lateran (1511), it was dogged by continued accusations of corruption, most famously in the person of Pope Alexander VI, who was accused variously of simony, nepotism and fathering four illegitimate children whilst Pope, whom he married off to gain more power.

Churchmen such as Erasmus and Luther proposed reform to the Church, often based on humanist textual criticism of the New Testament. It was Luther who in October 1517 published the 95 Theses, challenging papal authority and criticizing its perceived corruption, particularly with regard to its sale of indulgences. The 95 Theses led to the Reformation, a break with the Roman Catholic Church that previously claimed hegemony in Western Europe. Humanism and the Renaissance therefore played a direct role in sparking the Reformation, as well as in many other contemporaneous religious debates and conflicts.

In an era following the sack of Rome in 1527 and prevalent with uncertainties in the Catholic Church following the Protestant Reformation, Pope Paul III came to the papal throne (1534–1549), to whom Nicolaus Copernicus dedicated De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) and who became the grandfather of Alessandro Farnese (cardinal), who had paintings by Titian, Michelangelo, and Raphael, and an important collection of drawings and who commissioned the masterpiece of Giulio Clovio, arguably the last major illuminated manuscript, the Farnese Hours.

Science

The rediscovery of ancient texts and the invention of printing democratized learning and allowed a faster propagation of ideas. In the first period of Italian Renaissance, humanists favoured the study of humanities over natural philosophy or applied mathematics. And their reverence for classical sources further enshrined the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic views of the universe.

Even though, around 1450, the writings of Nicholas Cusanus were anticipating Copernicus' heliocentric world-view, it was made in a philosophical fashion. Science and art were very much intermingled in the early Renaissance, with polymath artists such as Leonardo da Vinci making observational drawings of anatomy and nature. He set up controlled experiments in water flow, medical dissection, and systematic study of movement and aerodynamics; he devised principles of research method that led to Fritjof Capra classifying him as "father of modern science".

In 1492 the "discovery" of the "New World" by Christopher Columbus challenged the classical world-view, as the works of Ptolemy (geography) and Galen (medicine) were found not always to match everyday observations: a suitable environment was created to question scientific doctrine. As the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation clashed, the Northern Renaissance showed a decisive shift in focus from Aristotelean natural philosophy to chemistry and the biological sciences. The willingness to question previously held truths and search for new answers resulted in a period of major scientific advancements.

Some have seen this as a "scientific revolution", heralding the beginning of the modern age. Others as an acceleration of a continuous process stretching from the ancient world to the present day. Regardless, there is general agreement that the Renaissance saw significant changes in the way the universe was viewed and the methods sought to explain natural phenomena. Traditionally held to have begun in 1543, when were first printed the books De humani corporis fabrica (On the Workings of the Human Body) by Andreas Vesalius, which gave a new confidence to the role of dissection, observation, and mechanistic view of anatomy., and also De Revolutionibus, by the Nicolaus Copernicus. The famous thesis of Copernicus' book was that the Earth moved around the Sun. Significant scientific advances were made during this time by Galileo Galilei, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler.

One important development was not any specific discovery, but rather the further development of the process for discovery, the scientific method. It focused on empirical evidence, the importance of mathematics, and discarded Aristotelian science. Early and influential proponents of these ideas included Copernicus and Galileo and Francis Bacon The new scientific method led to great contributions in the fields of astronomy, physics, biology, and anatomy.

Art

The Renaissance represents a cultural rebirth from the 14th through the middle of the 17th centuries. Early Renaissance, mostly in Italy, bridges the art period during the fifteenth century, between the Middle Ages and the High Renaissance in Italy. It is generally known that Renaissance matured in Northern Europe later, in 16th century.

One of the distinguishing features of Renaissance art was its development of highly realistic linear perspective. Giotto di Bondone (1267–1337) is credited with first treating a painting as a window into space, but it was not until the demonstrations of architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and the subsequent writings of Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) that perspective was formalized as an artistic technique. The development of perspective was part of a wider trend towards realism in the arts. To that end, painters also developed other techniques, studying light, shadow, and, famously in the case of Leonardo da Vinci, human anatomy. Underlying these changes in artistic method, was a renewed desire to depict the beauty of nature, and to unravel the axioms of aesthetics, with the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael representing artistic pinnacles that were to be much imitated by other artists. Other notable artists include Sandro Botticelli, working for the Medici in Florence, Donatello another Florentine and Titian in Venice, among others.

Concurrently, in the Netherlands, a particularly vibrant artistic culture developed, the work of Hugo van der Goes and Jan van Eyck having particular influence on the development of painting in Italy, both technically with the introduction of oil paint and canvas, and stylistically in terms of naturalism in representation. Later, the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder would inspire artists to depict themes of everyday life.

In architecture, Filippo Brunelleschi was foremost in studying the remains of ancient classical buildings, and with rediscovered knowledge from the 1st-century writer Vitruvius and the flourishing discipline of mathematics, formulated the Renaissance style which emulated and improved on classical forms. Brunelleschi's major feat of engineering was the building of the dome of Florence Cathedral. The first building to demonstrate this is claimed to be the church of St. Andrew built by Alberti in Mantua. The outstanding architectural work of the High Renaissance was the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica, combining the skills of Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, Sangallo and Maderno.

The Roman orders types of columns are used: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite. These can either be structural, supporting an arcade or architrave, or purely decorative, set against a wall in the form of pilasters. During the Renaissance, architects aimed to use columns, pilasters, and entablatures as an integrated system. One of the first buildings to use pilasters as an integrated system was in the Old Sacristy (1421–1440) by Filippo Brunelleschi.

Arches, semi-circular or segmental, are often used in arcades, supported on piers or columns with capitals. There may be a section of entablature between the capital and the springing of the arch. Alberti was one of the first to use the arch on a monumental. Renaissance vaults do not have ribs. They are semi-circular or segmental and on a square plan, unlike the Gothic vault which is frequently rectangular.

The Renaissance artists were not pagans although they admired antiquity and they also kept some ideas and symbols of the medieval past. Nicola Pisano (c. 1220–c. 1278) imitated classical forms by portraying scenes from the Bible. The Annunciation by Nicola Pisano, from the Baptistry at Pisa, demonstrates that classical models influenced Italian art before the Renaissance took root as a literary movement.

Cultural conditions in Florence

It has long been a matter of debate why the Renaissance began in Florence, and not elsewhere in Italy. Scholars have noted several features unique to Florentine cultural life which may have caused such a cultural movement. Many have emphasized the role played by the Medici, a banking family and later ducal ruling house, in patronizing and stimulating the arts. Lorenzo de' Medici (1449–1492) was the catalyst for an enormous amount of arts patronage, encouraging his countrymen to commission works from Florence's leading artists, including Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, and Michelangelo Buonarroti. Works by Neri di Bicci, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci and Filippino Lippi had been commissioned additionally by the convent di San Donato agli Scopeti of the Augustinians order in

Florence.

The Renaissance was certainly underway before Lorenzo came to power; this was before the Medici family itself achieved hegemony in Florentine society. Some historians have postulated that Florence was the birthplace of the Renaissance as a result of luck, i.e. because "Great Men" were born there by chance. Da Vinci, Botticelli and Michelangelo were all born in Tuscany. Arguing that such chance seems improbable, other historians have contended that these "Great Men" were only able to rise to prominence because of the prevailing cultural conditions at the time.

Humanism

In some ways Humanism was not a philosophy but a method of learning. In contrast to the medieval scholastic mode, which focused on resolving contradictions between authors, humanists would study ancient texts in the original, and appraise them through a combination of reasoning and empirical evidence. Humanist education was based on the programme of 'Studia Humanitatis', that being the study of five humanities: poetry, grammar, history, moral philosophy and rhetoric. Although historians have sometimes struggled to define humanism precisely, most have settled on "a middle of the road definition... the movement to recover, interpret, and assimilate the language, literature, learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome". Above all, humanists asserted "the genius of man ... the unique and extraordinary ability of the human mind."

Humanist scholars shaped the intellectual landscape throughout the early modern period. Political philosophers such as Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas More revived the ideas of Greek and Roman thinkers, and applied them in critiques of contemporary government. Pico della Mirandola wrote what is often considered the manifesto of the Renaissance, a vibrant defence of thinking, the Oration on the Dignity of Man. Matteo Palmieri (1406–1475), another humanist, is most known for his work Della vita civile ("On Civic Life"; printed 1528) which advocated civic humanism, and his influence in refining the Tuscan vernacular to the same level as Latin. Palmieri's written works drawn on Roman philosophers and theorists, especially Cicero, who, like Palmieri, lived an active public life as a citizen and official, as well as a theorist and philosopher and also Quintilian. Perhaps the most succinct expression of his perspective on humanism is in a 1465 poetic work La città di vita, but an earlier work Della vita civile (On Civic Life) is more wide-ranging. Composed as a series of dialogues set in a country house in the Mugello countryside outside Florence during the plague of 1430, Palmieri expounds on the qualities of the ideal citizen. The dialogues include ideas about how children develop mentally and physically, how citizens can conduct themselves morally, how citizens and states can ensure probity in public life, and an important debate on the difference between that which is pragmatically useful and that which is honest.

The humanists believed that it is important to transcend to the afterlife with a perfect mind and body. This transcending belief can be done with education. The purpose of humanism was to create a universal man whose person combined intellectual and physical excellence and who was capable of functioning honorably in virtually any situation. The education during Renaissance was mainly composed of ancient literature and history. It was thought that the classics provided moral instruction and an intensive understanding of human behavior.